Website: http://www.cemicroarray.com/
Sepsis is a life-threatening illness caused by the body’s overreaction to an infection and can be triggered either directly by infection or may occur after medical treatment or surgery.The mortality rate in patients admitted to hospital with severe sepsis is 28-50% and it remains the most prevalent cause of death in non-coronary Intensive Care Units (ICUs ). It is estimated that in the US ~$17 billion were spent annually treating sepsis in patients and a similar amount is spent across the EU. To reduce costs and provide better treatment to patients, early, accurate diagnosis is critically important.
The CE-microArray system utilizes existing technology from clinical chemistry, microplate readers and cavity enhanced spectroscopy in a truly novel way to develop more sensitive, accurate, faster and more useful diagnostic platform. The project aims to produce a solution based on colorimetric detection that will be up to 100 times more sensitive, reducing the damage to patients with sepsis, allow sensitive and accurate detection of an increased range of biomarkers at lower cost and higher throughput.
Eesti Innovatsiooni Instituut leads the integration of reader with bioassay as well as transferring the cavity enhanced optical setup from the prototype lab based microplate readers into commercial grade microplate readers. In addition, Eesti Innovatsiooni Instituut tests commercial bioassays against Procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP) and Interleucin 6 (IL6) with development of two systems:
- A commercial grade cavity enhanced microplate reader
- A commercial grade cavity enhanced imaging microplate reader